Lyudmila Zhivkova and the Paradox of Ideology and Identity in Communist Bulgaria

Abstract

This article argues that Lyudmila Zhivkova is the most controversial political figure in Communist Bulgaria. Zhivkova’s ideas and initiatives that have been overlooked so far are used as a background for exploring a significant conflict between ideology and national identity in modern Bulgarian history. After outlining briefly Zhivkova’s early and unexpected death, the author analyzes the Communist paradoxes of utopia, modernization, and return to feudalism that produced the idiosyncratic phenomenon of Zhivkova as “the uncrowned princess” of Communist Bulgaria. The author explains Zhivkova’s cultural politics as a rational approach worked out with the help of some of the most outstanding Bulgarian intellectuals at that time. Because of its heavy emphasis on national identity, Zhivkova’s cultural politics reveal clearly several sets of contradictory components of the Bulgarian national character and in some cases challenge the conventional wisdoms about Bulgarians. These sets are the quest for cultural achievements versus limited state resources; excessive national pride versus “shameful national identity”; Russophobes versus Russophiles; East versus West or how to escape the geopolitical trap; and mysticism versus atheism.